Depending on how far around the bend the sammy is, it's likely to cause some troubles if he's the only one with interacting skills. If you're showing the world a testosterone-and-adrenaline addict with his agression meter stuck on maximum as your business card, most peoples will expect the whole party to be on the rabid side. Which is likely to influence the sort of job opportunities they'll get.

What's worse, having the social element being the main comabatant can also cause some problems : your odds of convincing the nice cop that 'everything's right, it was a clear cut case of self defense' aren't exactly good if the speaker is packing enough questionably legal cyberware and guns to equip a decently-sized militia and is drenched in blood from several wounds. Or worse if he got knocked out and you have to fast-talk his backside out of custody.

Basically, it's a good idea to have some backup, especially in an area as usefull as schmoozing up to peoples. Pouring some karma in that direction might be a good investment for the hacker - mages and adepts tend to need every shred of karma they can get their hands on to fuel their mojo, where a hacker needs more cash than karma and can spare some.

I am Bubba the Love Troll, and I approve this message.

Diversification of skills and having people that have secondary tactical positions is always a smart idea. Crosstraining is very important, and key to a team.

And a damned good reason to have the Instruction skill! Spend your off time training each other in your areas of expertise.

Be a big surprise when the pacifistic Wicca Magician is able to bust the rest of the group out of prison through the judicious use of high explosives, with no casualties other than some hearing loss.

Also throw in obstacles that aren't easy to overcome without commonly-forgotten gear. Watch their gears spin while they try to come up with a solution to a problem that can easily and quietly be solved with a crowbar when their next best option is plastic explosive.

And it can sometimes be useful to use a not-so-vital situation (standard snatch-and-grab, etc.) to show them where they are lacking.

"The door is locked."

"Um, anyone got lockpicking? Electronics? Demolitions? Well damn, I guess this run was too tough for us."


Diversity is good, but in a campaign where PCs have an incentive to diversify, they will do so. Starting out, they are likelier to be highly specialized, because the system is pretty much designed to make specialization a lot easier to do than being an even moderately competent Jack of all Trades. But as soon as they get/spend some Karma, they will get better. That's what separates the upper-echelon runners from the rest. The "beginning" sammie might be rolling 20 dice for pistols, but the prime runner will also be good at sneaking, intimidation, driving, negotiating, etc.

actually he plays it pretty cool when negotiating. Think more like an antisocial type who is good at manipulating people. Being charismatic without caring for anything except how much the job is going to pay. It'll be fun watching the group have a moral quandry.

Actually, hilarious story... Different cyberpunk game.

I met up with friends I had known for years for the first time at a GenCon, and one of them ran us through a game, breaking into a warehouse.

We had the skills, but, for the life of us, a simple steel security door with a deadbolt and a doorknob lock defeated us. Picked it, broke the picks inside the lock. Cordless Drill, bit broke. Shot the locks with a "Suppressed" pistol, nothing. Just couldn't get the damned thing open.

An hour in real time, defeated, by a door!

And we had the skills!!!

Finally, someone got in through a window and opened the door, but she fell out of the window, hitting a number of crates on the way down.

Worst BlackOps Team Ever!!!

Just ran my group of three PCs through a combat in which they decimated the opposition but it was fine because they did it by planning and being smart. If they had gone with their front door plan it would have sucked but they used their heads, and then some exploding chemical vats, to take out 23 combat grunts and 12 combat ready technicians in 6 seconds while only taking stun damage. The challenge didn't lay in the combat it's self it laid in figuring out how to deal with the situation.

For those interested, it was a vehicle armoring plant. The rigger got to play GTA including running people over, the samy got shot at allot and got to produce much slaughter, and the sniper shot people through the vats causing the do not expose to air chemicals to explode.

Friend of mine used those when he cleaned oil refineries for a living, before he was hit by a dump truck full of sand in Texas. (He claims to be a cyborg now, due to the titanium in him.).

Nasty, nasty stuff!

Emphasis mine.

I've found there is a tight balance here. Sometimes my team does amazingly thorough Legwork and craft a fabulous and clever plan to deal with a potentially violent confrontation. When this happens you have an important choice to make as a GM: just how many unforeseen complications are you going to throw at them? I, personally, think that it is important to sometimes let a particularly clever plan play out mostly as the team intended. This appeals to the "Oceans 11" style of gameplay and lets the players feel like they are a well-oiled heist machine. This is not to say there are no complications or interesting situations, only that in these cases I throw nothing at them that completely fubars their plan.

You don't want to let your team get complacent. Sometimes they don't do a very good job on legwork and planning. Sometimes there are elements they just cannot uncover before "go" time. As other have already said, always try to have smart antagonists but don't give those antagonists "magical knowledge" of the the team's plans or the team's strengths and weaknesses.

I'll also reiterate what others have said regarding actual combat balance. If you have enough firepower to challenge the combat specialists on your team then you have more than enough firepower to kill the rest of the team in one initiative pass. Make the street sam(s) play smart; make them realize that part of their job is to distract attention from the more vulnerable team members. Make sure that the less heavily armored team members know that their greatest asset in combat is to go unnoticed by the opposition.

Also, make use of ambush situations when you can but be careful you don't overdo it. In Shadowrun, a Surprise initiative pass can be extremely decisive.

Especially if you're using a mortar for said Surprise Initiative Pass.

Semi-Auto Grenade Launcher works too.

ROFL-Reminds me of the session where my players came to a locked door (maglock-BTW) and could not open it. They settled for C12 instead to breach the door. Bad point the street doc knew they were comming, the good point, it was the barrens and didn't matter.

I think these things have been somewhat covered, but...

#1 You SHOULD have the spotlight shifting around to different players in different situations. Try not to have it stay somewhere too long or people zone out.

#2 Dungeons and Dragons features Dungeons and Dragons. This is Shadowrun and should feature players keeping to the Shadows and Running. What I mean is that you don't have to and should not design a series of encounters you expect them to win, thump their chest for a while, and than go on to the next. Instead feel free to design encounters where the runners are vastly outclassed, forcing them to be clever and use those stealth and athletic skills. Personally I like the idea of reinforcements. There are only basic security guards in the facility, but once the PANIC buttons start getting slapped it's only a matter of time before reinforcements show up. Spirits, airborn drones, and other drones or forces within the facility can arrive all too quickly. This makes players put off combat for as long as they can.

#3 In this edition characters don't die, they just loose edge. Give 'em a couple forgiving jobs to learn the ropes and the rolls. But after a few sessions the kid gloves can come off.

Running a D&D (*hiss, boo*) 4e (*HISS, BOO*) game featuring exactly Dungeons ruled by a Dragon, the dungeon out-classes the characters in several ways. It's actually proving quite difficult (but fun) for the party. They've avoided and/or defused a couple of situations, though. One trap didn't quite go off as planned because I had no rules on how to run it, so I'd made some up and ended with....exactly the counter getting trapped:

Hollow stone block falls from the ceiling "crushing" the unfortunate target (complete with bloodsack, oozing blood from underneath!) with a Silence spell cast on it to dull the shouts of the character trapped inside. So I figured, "Ok, so it'll be an opposed skill check, the trapped character's Endurance vs. the party's Perception. So I set it at 50-Endurance vs. Perception, higher "wins."
Trapped character rolled "average" and got a 30, being a Paladin trained in Endurance (so 50-30 = 20). Party rolled and got a 30. Darn!

Got some more traps up my sleeves though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif)

Killed a player last night, however. Buhaha. "Save or die" poison!

Actually... One of the people I know that can't play due to his schedule, came up with the idea of a Reality Show in Shadowrun of a Dungeon run by a Dragon that goes for Pay-Per-View/Simsense.

It's on an old Oil Derrick that's modified every time for a new maze, dealing with new challenges every time.

It's...X-Crawl.